Mike Webster bought outright the assets of what is now called Mobacar, which went live last week.

He is now expanding the business with €1m expansion funding led by top venture firm Delta and backed by Enterprise Ireland.

It has just won contracts with Lastminute.com and Travel.com in Australia.

Webster is seeking to hire ninja Java developers to work at Mobacar's Killarney base, where there are 15 people employed, and 10 more staff plus a chief operating officer are sought for high-skill tech jobs. He hopes Dublin rates and a surfy lifestyle will be a lure.

The fledgling business is thought to be worth around €3.5m. "It is eating into Cartrawler territory, and has won Swiftfleet, one of its former clients," a source said. Cartrawler, started by Greg and Niall Turley, is currently for sale valued at €180m.

Webster acquired 100 per cent of the assets of NovaCarHire.com from Fexco last month for an undisclosed sum.

The company has already rented cars to over 1.5 million people from over 140 countries, with over 500 car rental suppliers under the former Novacar brand.

"There is simply nothing like our solution in the market," said Webster. "Our clients are the world's largest travel brands, who want to offer car rental to their customers in an entirely new way – they do not want the vanilla offering that exists in the market – it's radical and it's highly disruptive."